Wattsburg native pursues passions in Florida's Everglades

This is a contribute photo of Wattsburg native and Mercyhurst College graduate Brent Anderson, who now works as a biologist for the state of Florida and has published a book of landscape photographs of the northern Everglades.BRITTANY PRISCHAK/Contributed

Brent Anderson never wanted to choose between his two passions. So once he got to college, he didn't, majoring in biology and minoring in photography.

Now a biologist for the state of Florida, Anderson, a 33-year-old Wattsburg native, shoots photos of the places he works, which, in his case, are often swamps, bogs, rivers and coastal waterways.

He's combined everything -- his camera, his love of conservation, and his ongoing work on a massive project to restore Florida's Kissimmee River -- into a recently published coffee-table book, "The Northern Everglades."

The 64-page narrative is a journey through the hollows and backwater pools of the northernmost stretch of the Everglades, where Anderson and other South Florida Water Management District biologists are in the middle of a decade-long project to rehydrate lands drained in the 1960s to prevent flooding.

Anderson captured the twisted roots of a centuries-old cypress tree and a monster storm that rolled in over the river, shaking the water around him with its thunderclaps. He also shot a sprawling mossy oak so enormous it can survive when completely immersed, and a requisite collection of tequila sunrises and orange-purple sunsets.

"It was a dream come true putting it all together, because the book is a combination of the things I'm really passionate about," said Anderson, who graduated from Mercyhurst Preparatory School and Mercyhurst College before completing work on a master's degree in biology from Florida Atlantic University six years ago.

He went to work with the South Florida Water Management District not long after that, landing on the Kissimmee project, which is scheduled for completion in 2014 but will require full-time monitoring and study by Anderson and his colleagues for several more years.

"It's been an incredible success so far," Anderson said of the restoration. "One of the best parts of my job are the aerial surveys we take twice a month from a helicopter. When you fly over, you can see the whole region that was all this farmland and dry plain come back to life as a wetland. The birds that migrate are noticing the water again, and they'll come down and feed."

In the meantime, Anderson has made South Florida his adopted home. He and his wife, Nicole, live in Lake Worth, near West Palm Beach, with their 2-year-old daughter, Lyla, and newborn son, Parker.

One of the family's pastimes is heading out to explore, just as Anderson enjoyed wandering around Presque Isle State Park and along the banks of French Creek growing up.

"We've just started putting Parker in a backpack, and he loves it, so everybody can go," said Anderson, who's also maintained a connection with people back in Erie.

He stays in touch with Michael Campbell, a biology professor at Mercyhurst University who was influential in shaping Anderson's career and who will take a group of 16 students to Florida in February to observe Anderson's field work, the second year in a row he's led such a trip.

"He was a student who kind of came to biology with the same perspective I did," Campbell said of Anderson. "Like me, he figured out a way to make a living doing something he loves. He's a great success story."

JOHN DUDLEY can be reached at 870-1677 or by e-mail. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ETNdudley.